"You're as fit as ever you were in your life," said Dick, as if he grudged it to him. "And more fascinating, I suppose, to a girl like her. There's something pathetic about it. It's half pity, too! Nothing so dangerous in the world."
Raven swung round, walked to the window and, hands in his pockets, stood looking out. In love with Nan! well, he did love Nan better than any created thing. All the old tests, the old obediences, would be nothing to him if he could consecrate them to Nan, her happiness, her safety in this dark world. How about his life? Yes, he would give that, a small thing, if Nan needed the red current of it to quicken her own. But "in love" as Dick understood it! If you were to judge Dick's comprehension of it from his verse, love was a sex madness, a mortal lure for the earth's continuance, by the earth begot. And who had unconsciously held out that lure to him but the woman of mystery up there on the road in that desolate house with her brutal husband and her deficient child? He had seen the innocent lure, he had longed to put out his hand to the hand unconsciously beckoning. Through the chill wintry night the message came to him now. And only Nan could understand that the message might come and that it was a part of the earth and to be forgotten, like a hot wind or a thrilling song out of the dark—Nan, his darling, a part of him, his understanding mind, as well as the fiber of his heart. Suddenly he turned on Dick who was watching him, ready, it seemed, to pounce on his first change of look.
"Dick," he said, "I adore Nan."
"Yes," said Dick, "I know you do. I told you——"
"But," broke in Raven, "you don't know anything about it."
"Oh," said Dick, "then I don't adore her, too."
Raven reflected. No, his inner mind told him, there was no community of understanding between them. How should Dick traverse with him the long road of rebuff and downfall he had traveled? How should youth ever be expected to name the cup it has not tasted? For Dick, he thought again, what is known as love was a simple, however overwhelming, matter of the mounting blood, the growing year. For him it would be the ashes of forgotten fire, the strange alembic mixed of bitter with the sweet. In that moment he faced an acknowledged regret that he had not lived the normal life of marriage at the start, the quieting of foolish fevers, the witness of children. We are not, he reflected, quite solvent unless we pay tribute before we go. He mused off into the vista of life as it accomplishes itself not in great triumphal sweeps, but fitful music hushed at intervals by the crash of brutal mischance, and only, at the end, a solution of broken chords. Meantime Dick watched him, and Raven at last, feeling the boy's eyes on him, came awake with a start.
"Yes, Dick," he answered gently, "of course you love her. And it ought to do you good. It's a big thing to love Nan."
"Very well then," said Dick, his voice trembling a little in answer to that gentler tone, "you let her alone, can't you? Nan's a different girl when she's with you. It's no use denying it. You do hypnotize her."
"Dick," said Raven, "that's a beastly thing to say. If you mean it to be as offensive as it sounds, you ought to be booted for it."